Requiem for a Dream
by Laura Fones
Summary: FaithAngel


Title: Requiem for a Dream  
  
Author: Laura Fones  
  
E-mail Address: rb46628@aol.com  
  
Distribution: Just ask.  
  
Spoilers: Five by Five and slight Enemies (Faith and Angel did have sex in that episode and I will maintain that until the day I die).  
  
Rating: PG-13  
  
Content: Faith/Angel  
  
Summary: Twin views of a complicated situation.  
  
Disclaimer: I own nothing in relation to the show Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Joss Whedon and Mutant Enemy own all. The poem was taken from a promo for the greatest independent film of all time, I'm not quite sure of the exact origin though.  
  
Feedback: I love it, I thrive on it.  
  
  
  
They held each other and kissed.  
  
And pushed each other's darkness into the corner.  
  
Believing in each other's light, each other's dream.  
  
  
  
  
  
"Please Angel," She sobbed, clutching to my shirt and shaking me, "Please just do it." She swallowed and whimpered, "Please, just kill me." She collapsed into my arms, sniffling miserably, "Just kill me."  
  
God, if only I could. Why couldn't the rain and tears have made her look less than perfect? Why couldn't she just have been a demon that I could slaughter and not adore? Why did she have to be vulnerable then? Why couldn't I have given up on her when I had the chance, before I even gave her a chance, before I actually started to care?  
  
I closed my arms around her and murmured gentle cooing sounds. "It's going to be all right. I'm here for you." She nuzzled into my chest, even though it was colder there with chilled rain and my undead skin. She was still sobbing and I felt the warm tears seeping through the already sodden material. I hugged her tighter to me, and I heard a clatter on the ground. Wesley. Bloodied and in pain, and why didn't I care. I nodded Wesley off and explained the police couldn't handle a Slayer; she would have to stay the night.  
  
And then, there she was, haunted and scared, tossing and turning in her sleep. I wanted to hold her and gently tell her I was going to make everything better in her life. But how could I promise that when my life was still in utter chaos.  
  
She doesn't deserve this! I hammered my fist against the wall and rubbed my forehead. Why couldn't I have served her penance for her?  
  
  
  
I rolled and turned and feigned sleep. I couldn't believe I'd let him see me, hold me, touch me like that. I wanted him to kill me. Why did he have to make me feel that? Why was he the only one who could actually make me feel something that wasn't anger or pain or envy for that little blonde headed Slayer?  
  
Didn't he get it? The game was for me. All weapons finally laid out, and I wanted to be the one who fell down in the end. Couldn't he have done that for me? He could've just turned his back on me like everyone else, turn that concern he had to hatred like everyone else. But he isn't like everyone else, is he? He didn't turn me away. He never did. He wouldn't even fight me; he wouldn't let me make him want to kill me.  
  
And then I heard a bang, and I moved off the bed, silently approaching the door, peering at him from behind it. He paced and muttered to himself and I swear I could hear my own heart beating. His eyes were downcast, but I could feel him staring at me.  
  
"Faith," He murmured, and I thought he had seen me, or sensed me, however it is he always knows I'm around.  
  
I shrunk back but he continued, and I knew I was safe. God, what was he talking about? Years of his tortured soul and how difficult it is to balance out the infamous cosmic scale. Most of it was bullshit really.but then, why did I always end up letting down my defenses? He was the only one who could get to me. Maybe because it seemed he was the only one who cared. Buffy was Miss. Holier than Thou and I was her project, her black sheep. She herded me like it anyway. She would hide under the mask of concern "Faith we can help you" and she would really be trying to prove her higher position, that she was the bigger man.  
  
But Angel spoke to me. Not like a child, but like a person. He didn't speak down to me, or give me ultimatums, he was worried for me, he knew me, and I swear once or twice he showed love for me. He kept trying after B gave up. And he made me break down, and he made me trust him. That bastard. Why'd he have to be the one to make me feel something? Somewhere in that trust for him I started to care about him, that wasn't how it was supposed to go. I don't care, I don't want to care. I cared about B and she left me in the hospital for all the care I gave her. And all for Angel.  
  
You think I would be pissed, see that somehow it was his fault. I wanted it to be his fault. but it isn't, it's mine. it's always mine. So why was I still standing behind a door, looking at his dark hair and his pale skin and his penetrating eyes and everything else that was perfect about him? Because I cared too much.  
  
"Angel?" I spoke very softly, I didn't want to say anything, but somehow it slipped out.  
  
"Faith," He stopped pacing and I could see the look of concern in his eyes, "Are you ok? Did you have a nightmare?"  
  
I shrugged, in as best a casual manner as I could, "No," I lied, "Everything's five by five." I pushed a stray piece of hair behind my ear and said, almost inaudibly, "Um, can I sit down or something?" He nodded and hastily pulled out a chair for me in the dining room. I sat down and played unmindfully with my hands. God, I look nervous.  
  
"Do want some tea?" He revealed a kettle that for some reason seemed to be permanently bonded to the stove.  
  
I smiled and asked in a sarcastic tone, "Do you drink anything else?"  
  
He gave a little grin as well and commented, "Well, I do," He gestured to the fridge and shrugged, "I just somehow figured you wouldn't like the taste of pig's blood."  
  
"Tea's fine." He started to get up, but I stopped him, saying, "I'll get it." Of course, forever being the gentleman, he refused to let me go unattended, as if somehow in the three-yard distance some horrible force would swallow me from the ground. I didn't think I seemed that fragile.  
  
"I'm a big girl you know," I said as he took the kettle and insisted I sit down to be served.  
  
"I'm left over from before chivalry was dead," He smiled, "Humor me."  
  
  
  
She looked liked glass to me for some reason; I couldn't help the intense craving to hold her. Her smiles looked almost pained and I wanted just to touch her. The demon in me fluttered through my head saying things like "You love, her don't you?" And all I wanted to hear was her voice.  
  
"You look distressed," And the stupidest possible thing that could have left my mouth did and she looked up.  
  
"You've brooded non stop since the day I met you and I have yet to say a thing about it." Her tone had humor but her face was expressionless, she stared into the cup in front of her and I could hear the monotonic beats of her heart.  
  
"Please talk to me." I wondered where the filter of my speech went and why, of course, were my thoughts coming out of my mouth instead of churning around in my head.  
  
"I don't want to talk," She said, taking a small sip from her tea, gently wiping her finger against her top lip. "Talking never solves anything." She paused and her tone moved to an almost voiceless whisper, "And I don't want to cry again." I think she said it more to herself than to me. It was always hard to tell.  
  
"Tell me what you want." I knew what a random request that was, but I just needed to.I don't know, listen.  
  
"What do I want?" She repeated the question back to me in an ironic tone. "I want." She paused and considered, "I just want.someone to hold me and tell me exactly the right things to make it all better."  
  
"No one can do that for you Faith," I said sympathetically, "Nothing is ever 'all better' and you'll be lucky to make it right with anyone."  
  
"Gee," She frowned a little, "Thanks for the pep talk, coach." She leaned back in her chair and stared at the ceiling.  
  
"No, Faith. I meant," I moved over next to her and kneeled (as I had often been told that the hovering I've been known to do is slightly intimidating), "I am here for you, and I'll do whatever is in my power to help you. but still," She glanced at me as I paused and listened expectantly, "It still is up to you to make it better, on your own terms."  
  
"My own terms?" She seemed to consider it for a moment; "I want to make it right with you first, Angel."  
  
My heart jumped a moment (and for a man without a pulse, that's saying quite a bit) as she looked at me in such a strangely innocent manner, I had to control every predatory nerve in my body that yelled to me 'take her, take her'. God, she looked beautiful. Her eyes seemed gleamed over with the tears I knew always hid just behind her lids.  
  
She swallowed and rubbed her palm against her forehead, "I suck at apologies," She smiled sardonically, "And I owe everybody so many." She paused, "But with you, I feel like I should apologize.so, can you accept my 'I'm sorry'?"  
  
"Yeah," I nodded and touched my hand gently to her shoulder, "I understand."  
  
"And, uh, Angel." She wet her lips with the soft pink of her tongue and knelt her head down.  
  
"Yeah?" I asked softly, hoping for something more than 'I'm sorry'.  
  
  
  
Well Angel, I'm in love with you and have been for quite some time now but you were too busy with Buffy to even really recognize I existed.Somehow I felt that wouldn't have gone over too well, so I just said faintly, almost pathetically really, "Never mind."  
  
  
  
She looked so.hurt, I couldn't understand why. Shouldn't I have been the one sitting alone in a darkened room pondering the pain and suffering of my life and avoiding all things that could possibly make me happy? Yeah, I should have.  
  
"Tell me," I said to her, not really even on my own accord either, she just looked so lost I couldn't help but say something.  
  
  
  
"Sometimes," I said, not really speaking to him, or me, or anything at all, but just speaking, "I think about life, my life." What the hell was I talking about.should I really have cared at that moment? No, "There's so much crap," I look down, "But then, if I look really closely at everything.a person, a tree, even like a piece of broken glass or a cat lying down and purring, I." Pausing, I licked my lips and pulled at a strand of hair, "I start to physically hurt inside, like.like there's so much good in the world that I can't take it.and I just start to block it off, see only the crap." I looked up at Angel; his eyes were just gazing into me, like he knew what I was seeing, "I wish I could be like you." I didn't mean to say it, but the thought had passed, I had said it, I couldn't do anything about it so I continued, "You see all that good and you, you just." I swallowed and let my lips break into a smile to get over the humiliation I was feeling, "I don't know what I'm talking about."  
  
"Yes you do," He gently grabbed my arm and held it, "I know what you're talking about and it's okay. You don't have to know the words to say everything, not everything has to be the right thing. It just has to be you." I wasn't really sure what he was talking about but I nodded anyway and this weird feeling came over me. I just felt helpless, and I fell limp for some reason. He easily caught me and picked me up and, holding me to his chest, set me down on his couch and sat next to me, his arm around me, holding me up.  
  
  
  
She looked so fragile, I couldn't move for fear that somehow she'd shatter. She always amazed me. Everyone always said she looked like a slut, she was cheap, she was a heartless bitch. No, she could never be any of those things. Her sad eyes, her strange self-hatred that gave a curious and unique innocence behind her whore's masquerade, she didn't have the spite and bitterness in her to be truly as evil as she would have everyone believe. She just hated herself, wanted to end it. And, I guess to her, making everyone hate you would be the end of that problem.  
  
So vulnerable and alone and almost helpless. She sometimes made me want to weep, for her, for me, for everything she ever knew, almost like I could feel every bit and emotion she had ever possessed.and she was right, sometimes it's just too much to take.  
  
I kissed her forehead and she didn't move, almost like she didn't feel it.  
  
"Angel," There was a wistful loneliness in her voice as she turned over and laid her head on my shoulder, her face expressionless.  
  
"Yes." My hand cupped her head against me.  
  
"I don't want to be this." Her melancholy tone infected the air like some deadly disease. I felt her pain.  
  
"What don't you want to be?" I started to lean my head on top of hers and move my hand from her head to her arm and hold her closer.  
  
"Not with you." Her voice was almost muted, but she seemed so distant that I wondered if she knew what she was saying.  
  
I lifted her chin with my finger and I saw a glimmer of hope in her eyes. "I've never wanted to be without you." I was finally able to say that out loud, and to her.  
  
I was about to go on but she silenced me with her finger, "Don't say anything, please?" She swallowed and bit down on her lip. "Whenever someone says 'I love you' or 'I need you' there's always a 'but'. And I don't want this to stop just because you think there will be horrible consequences.I just. I just want you to kiss me.please?" Her beseeching tone made her even more tempting and I couldn't resist. I bent my head down and touched my lips to her. I could feel her let out a small breath against my mouth and then deepen the kiss.  
  
She entangled her fingers in my hair and pressed her palm against my chest. She started an assault on my neck and began to pull at my shirt, forcing it down and giving her access to my bare torso. I knew what she was doing, I always do.  
  
I pulled her face up and she looked at me, confused, "What's wrong?"  
  
I looked her in the eye and said, humorlessly, "This isn't going to make it better Faith."  
  
"What do you mean," She looked taken aback and somewhat offended. "I didn't mean."  
  
"Faith," I sighed, it had developed as a habit, "I know you feel incredibly vulnerable right now, but you're trying to take comfort in the wrong thing, and since I do feel for you we're running the rather dire risk of losing my soul and it would only, well, in deep understatement, complicate things." I took her face in my hands, "I don't want you to use me as just a backup that you can console yourself with." I paused, "I'm here for you Faith, but if it's not truth to you, I can't be here for you like that."  
  
She narrowed her eyes and her voice cracked, as if she would lose some type of control, "Is that what you think this is?" Her brow furrowed and she looked so desperate I felt my heart ripping in two, losing my composure, "How can you think that. I l...." She paused and sucked in a breath, "Just forget it ok.I'm gone," She started to walk away, but I held out my arm and she looked back.  
  
"Faith," I held a breath I didn't know I was capable of having and I asked, "Do you love me?"  
  
"What?" She looked at me unbelieving.  
  
"Do you love me?" I looked down from her eyes, and instead to her lips. They were trembling.  
  
  
  
I took in breath after breath, trying to fight the hysteria that was threatening to take over my being. I did. I loved him, I couldn't help it. But to say it or even think it, to move my lips and have the words threaten to form on my tongue felt like a knife being thrust into my gut.  
  
"Do you love me?" He asked again, and I looked up at him, my lips quivering, and I could only hope he could see in my eyes that I did.  
  
"Just tell me, Faith," He looked so hurt, almost desperate. "Please?"  
  
I felt the words caress my tongue. They seared and sizzled and burned my flesh, but I cared too much to let them stay there. "I do." I almost whimpered. And even after, my mouth felt scalded and cut, knowing that I could never take those words back.  
  
I saw a genuine smile cross his face, and he moved toward me, cradling my head and leaning it upwards to meet his lips. His hand moved to the small of my back, pulling me firmly against him.  
  
  
  
Her lips were so soft and full that I had to fight the urge to devour them. She was so close that I could smell the spicy perfume of her hair and feel the delicately curved hips and stomach against my body. But the urgency of her movements, the grabbing of hair, the quickness of her tongue.I knew that she thought this was all a dream, a lenitive fantasy to ease some cold melancholy she felt and couldn't get rid of. I stilled her hands, moved them to her side, she struggled a little and finally slowed and stopped the kiss.  
  
"You don't want it like this," Her voice was almost childlike and purely innocent, "Do you?"  
  
I answered honestly, I at least owed her that, "It's too fast."  
  
"Well, what do you suggest," She said sarcastically, "Dinner and a show? Would that really help, a normal date?"  
  
"Sit." I said and lowered her to the couch sitting down next to her. "I have a proposal."  
  
"And what is that?" She crossed her arms and lean against the arm of the furniture.  
  
"A guessing game." I said.  
  
"Angel, it's not Parker and Bradley's family night," She quirked an eyebrow.  
  
"You're still a kid." She moved to protest but I silenced her with a finger to her lips, "How old are you, sixteen, seventeen?"  
  
"Nineteen," She scowled, "But that didn't seem to bother you when you were screwing around with Buffy, did it."  
  
I took a deep breath, wondering for a second why she was being so defensive and then decided to bestow some pointless knowledge on her. "You know, when I first met Buffy, I thought she was the one. And so, I had this bullshit theory that all it took to build a successful relationship was the right person, that all the problems we had could be solved because it was meant to be." I sighed for a moment, leaving Faith's commentary a chance to cut in.  
  
"And, of course," She said flatly, "It never occurred to you that she might not be the 'right person'."  
  
"Not at the time, no." I let her last comment not faze me. "Then things happened that made me realize how difficult this whole Romeo and Juliet thing could be. I realized that it wasn't really me that she was in love with, but instead just the concept of me. The thing is, I felt the same way. She lived in this fantasy world with this incredibly romantic notion of 'forbidden love' and I. I was just as vacuous. We weren't in love, we were just playing out some pretentious whimsy that every teenage girl fantasizes about when she thinks of how fun it would be in some dime store romance novel."  
  
She raised an eyebrow, almost as if some of what I'd said had punctured the surface. "So, why did you lose you soul when you and Buffy." She swallowed, looking somewhat hurt, "And not with me."  
  
"Because with you there was no actual penetration." I said truthfully, "I knew that I would lose it and I didn't want to hurt you physically." She seemed to accept that and leaned her head against her folded arms.  
  
"So then, that's all you feel for me." Her lips curved painfully, "Some 'whimsy'."  
  
I shook my head and went to touch her arm but she pulled away quickly, crawling into a ball at the edge of the couch. "It's okay." She swallowed and shrugged with some difficulty, "I mean, that's more than I've gotten off of most guys, right?"  
  
"Faith," I pleaded, "You have to know you're so much more than that to me."  
  
She held up her hands and wet her lips, "Stop with the clichéd responses Angel, at least give me that much."  
  
"I am," I said and she waved her hand to silence me.  
  
"Yes or no answer." She sniffed, "You say you love me more than you ever loved Buffy, in fact you deny ever loving Buffy at all."  
  
"Yes."  
  
She nodded, looking somewhat satisfied, "But you told Buffy you did love her."  
  
"Yeah, but I." She shook her head, indicating I was not to speak.  
  
"If you told her that you loved her," Her voice softened, "Then how can I trust that you have any feelings for me?"  
  
She looked somewhat like a lost puppy for a moment, revealing the line of questioning was just as hurtful to her as it was to me. I was somewhat speechless and we remained in silence for a few moments. She uncurled from the ball she had formed with her body and adjusted more comfortably, still moving away from my touch.  
  
I finally sighed and placed my hand on hers before she could squirm away. "How can I prove to you that I do?"  
  
She looked helpless and considered for a moment. "I don't know." She sniffled and sighed and leaned forward. "So, uh, how does this work?"  
  
"I don't think there's a simple answer to that." I moved my hand to her shoulder to test if she'd let me touch her. She did.  
  
"I wish there was."  
  
"I know." I lowered my head to look her in the eye and smile. "Maybe we should consider dinner and a movie after all."  
  
She let a small smile slip as well and seemed to think for a moment. "A normal courting ritual. I shudder to think."  
  
I stood up and offered out my hand, "Let's try it." She raised her eyebrow, considering, then finally took my hand. I smiled.  
  
"I'll try anything once."  
  
  
  
THE END 


End file.
